Door to door soul men

Did you know
They put commercials
Inside commercials now?
A franken horror of late capitalism
Animated by a greed
Made tangible
The bad boy/ girl/non-binary friend
We just can’t quit.*

We make a 1,000 excuses
We know they lie
We know they cheat at Scrabble
We know we can’t stay
But they are warm
Sometimes there
Always a spectacle.

Why do I think
This is the good life?
Marketing door to door
The soul men
Easy installments….
It can cut metal…
Kill germs…
Educate the children…
IMPROVE your life.
Don’t
Get
ꓱꓞꓱꓶ
Behind.

Pehiw Awakening 2022
*See Lauren Datson

“Don’t forget” A response to musician Keaton Henson

“I see
a woman
a shadow to you.
Nothing and EVERYTHING
Her presence
Dances your blood.”

I can’t send that text.
An email?
A memo?
Or tendrils of cautious hope?
Do you have that app installed?

I see them
The awe of universe
We don’t have words
For those colours

(Intermission ∞)

You heard me!
The very sun appears in delight
“Don’t forget you still got art in you yet”

Pehiw Awakening 2022 For TB

Leave no letter unloved

No poem is a simple thing

All those

S             p             a             c             e             s            

Adolescent letters overcompensate

“Let’s say nothing about…(ssssh) punctuation

I remember

The first time with cummings”

“No capitals – that’s so low born”

I remember

A friend made

Lived

And gone

Nothing but blue skies from now on

The perilous beauty

(really haze pollution)

Dostyovski

I stole that book –

Paid the library back

Cause I couldn’t

Imagine a world

Where you could own such a precious symphony of humanness.

You comforted me in a moment of loss.

 

This should be another poem

Okri

Whitehead

You are branded

Underneath

Ink

Letters

Promises

My blood part

Now made

A love affair while musiced by Dylan

Close enough to touch

I should have said yes

 

Too many lifetimes

Seasons

Spent enthralled

-        I love those CHAV boys

Their play grounds are concrete

But they know their places.

Too many too remember

All those “angry women”

“others”

Too tired to coat the truth.

I knew they were bad for me

Fuck – “girls just wanna…”

 

Dim lights – change set

 

You got me banned,

A technicality – an enemy officer

I remember that night like a movie

You were there

Calming frightened boys

As your homeland

Burned.

I watched you lie

Once you met us

When you heard about a place

Where the colour of your skin

Didn’t target you for death.

You made that lie real

“Next time sleep NATO”

 

I meet the [REDACTED]

“Do you have terrorist affiliations?

My “What’s your time frame?”

Wrong answer

Cause I got blood

From lots of places/times

Where folks like us

Were punished

Wrong side of that battle.

500 lbs of rope to kill a man?

What civil servant procured?

Is there a form for that?

Did Louie himself

Fill out forms?

 

More letters

I even judged the letters – scrabble whores

“X, Y, Z”

Pervert

No family

Forever alone

Values printed on their faces

““Q” can be a real thrill”

-        On stage reveal –

Leave no letter unloved

Cause

Your story

Your truth

You

All medicines to the circle

 

Pehiw Wandering 2022

Untitled

What if our speakers
could not music our minds?
What if our sacred things weep
delegated to cases
basement bureaucracies?
What if trust...
Shatters again?

Pehiw Wandering 2022

The answers are in the work

Are we healing?
Meeting?
Writing?
Doing?
Creating?
Doing a chemistry?
Mixing proportions?
Learning new precautions?
Refining our hypothesis?

Elder S reminds us
-the answers are in the work-
That is
Knowing our helpers
Knowing our spaces
Knowing our gifts
Know that you and circle are one
-don’t forget you are medicines –

You are not a ”sinner”
You are not a binary
You are nana’s kitchen/grandpa’s workshop*
You are awe
You are.

Remember yourself
Find old loves
Thrill your soul
Create something just for you
Cause you are healing.

Pehiw Awakening 2022

*Insert your safe place.

Star/primordial truths.

I never expected
TV to see me
To tell my story
My star/primordial truths.
I can never be the person you love.
That potentiality died.
You can’t love me.
I am only a place holder for “other*”
No!
I am somethings else
New transformed
trying to love my twisted places
To see the beauty they bring
Tell the story.
Maybe I don’t need your love
And maybe you don’t need theirs

Pehiw Awakening 2022

*Add your truth here. For me this other is a blond, blue eyed, beauty, uncomplicated, traditional mother/wife, easy fit, normal.

Sometimes eyes

Sometimes
I can’t meet your eyes
As my mind
Has set up camp
Down the end of a long hallway
Down to treasures
A tomb
Not yet plundered.
I worry – how could people
Who venerated their dead
Who sent them off with treasures
Rob their god-kings?

Don’t need need royal proclamation
To tell the peoples hurting.
Economist not needed.
This shit is pretty clear.

We gotta take back all our futures
Invent languages of reciprocity
Empty tombs
Bring those ancestors home
Bring them to work
Listen x2
Learn
See ourselves
See our truths
Meet our own eyes.

Pehiw Awakening 2022

Untitled

You are
NOT
Your womb/seed
You are woman/person
You create life
In so many ways
Each day
Each gathering
Each hug
You mother
The motherless
You listen without judgement
You wipe our tears
And help us imagine
Learn
And hope

Pehiw Awakening 2022

Vibes

“Human trafficking.”
The Elders pull us from our joy
Remind us to widen our circles
Who is missing?
Who is hurting?
Who is haunted by ghosts?
Dead babies kill the vibe.
I joke cause it hurts too much.

Suicide makes me freeze
Even as I lean on my sorrows
To make THAT call to another mother.
No wonder some days hurt.
Mine made it through
-for now –
Until someone decides.
They still steal us
Missing and maimed families
Kills the vibe
I don’t always celebrate – it hurts too much

Dis-ease
Claims our bodies, our Elders and our lands
It draws it’s payment
In paper and forms
In discrimination and assumption
Taking it’s pound of flesh
In more scarred, harmed, disappeared.
Is it “progress” that you now give back our dead?

Racism.
That kills the vibe,
But I don’t always get mad – it hurts too much

Shame.
That one haunts many.
Good/Bad
Sinner/Saint
Ruler/Ruled
It takes payment in currency of the self
In midnight recriminations
The jailer is gone
The doors may be heavy
But together we are strong
Together we are enough
Together we can heal
And hold each other
When we must traverse spaces that still hurt too much.

Pehiw Awakening 2022

Economic Development

Let’s start a business with Nanabush.
Imagine!
Economic development
Where we are all better off?
The greedy self-immolated asses
- All the trees give a giggle –
The river shares cool relief
An occasional duck
Gives an angry quack
Birch shares her healing
And the story spreads.

“Watch for that one – who has so little he must trick others.”
He is so self-hating
He can’t believe community –
He thinks he can survive alone.

Petal to stem
Roots to earth
All pity
All are warned.

Pehiw Awakening 2022

Behind our desks

How many gifts do we hide behind our desks?
What
If we
Set them free?

What if
Your words
Inspired painters
Who gifted
A new language
To Makers
Who dance with medicines
Make a rhythm

That resonates with our drummers
That activates hearts

A song of we
A new language of wonder
That embodies our thinkers
Who take us on journeys
Future/past
To re/pre member
Our languages
Our rhythms
Our hearts
And our gifts.

Pehiw Awakening 2022